


Like Calls To Like

by CuriousMeans



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, a character study, by an idiot who is actually four cats in a trench coat drinking respect genya and david juice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 08:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20832170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriousMeans/pseuds/CuriousMeans
Summary: “It’s just like he says,” said Genya with the arrogance only a seven-year-old could have, and David didn’t have to ask who. The only person who hadn’t left them both behind. “Like calls to like.”***David and Genya, unlike everyone in their own ways, find each other.





	Like Calls To Like

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back on my bullshit.
> 
> My bullshit is making David a well-rounded character and not a caricature using rambling slices of life.

He didn’t talk, the Kostyk family’s youngest boy. He was Grisha, they were sure, but it was too early to tell which order.  _ Grisha  _ passed for  _ odd  _ in their isolated town, though there were occasionally still stories of children about his age of three who  _ changed  _ overnight, and all of those those children were sorted out sooner or later. They wandered too far and were taken by the Drüskelle, or they stayed in town and were taken by the Grisha examiners. Either way, they were never seen again. It was better that way.

“He won’t make it to ten if they don’t take him,” said David’s mother one morning, her gaze following the up and down, up and down, up and down movement of her youngest son’s hands. She didn’t bother lowering her voice. He never spoke. How could he know the words? “The mornings are the worst. He’s always still here.”

David froze, hands above his head. Congealed milk—all morning he had been dripping vinegar into his cup—oozed between his fingers and down his arms. He was slow and serious, child hands dribbling every now and then and child face twisting up in disappointment. His mother was happy he seemed to have feelings at least.

“Seemed to” his father always said.

David knew what most of those words meant. He lowered his hands and tipped over his cup. He had done something different and wanted to share, but they hadn’t understood. They hadn’t come. They had only talked.

He hated talking.

No one ever said what they meant, and making the right sounds was hard. It was easier to be quiet.

***

David couldn’t sit still. He didn’t do many things like a normal child, but sitting was the most annoying of many. He perched on the edge of his chair, rearranging the table till it was to his liking, and he frowned when his brothers messed it up. He used to cry.

At loud noises. At busy markets. At hugs.

He didn’t cry now, but his mother didn’t hug him either.

David didn’t think it a fair trade. He didn’t have the words to say that, though, so he just frowns. The serious little Kostyk boy, more weed than child.

He picked at his baked bun, the short dough coming apart in his unskilled hands, and pulled the cabbage free of it. He nibbled at the bun.

“David,” his mother said, “if you can’t eat like a person, you can eat outside with the goats.”

He would starve to death, she was certain, unless someone reminded him to eat or made him eat. There were so many things he wouldn’t eat. Each bite looked like agony.

“Some folks haven’t got what we’ve got,” his father said. “You want to have nothing?”

David shook his head.

“You want something else to eat?” his father asked.

“Yes.” Cabbage squished, and it made David’s nerves all squishy and his skin ache. “Please?”

His father slammed a fist on the table, and David jerked back.

“Outside!” His father pointed to the door, and David knew better than to not scramble for the outside.

_ “You asked me,” _ David never said.  _ “Why ask if you didn’t want an answer?” _

His mother finds him at the door the next morning. He rocks, from heel to toe to heel to toe to heel to toe and into her when the door opens. He always rocks. He bounces, too, when he walks, and the rocking is like a leftover from the movement he wants to spend. It’s like he doesn’t know what his body is doing or where it is.

It is the first hug David has ever given her.

“I won’t ask anything else,” said David. “I’ll be good.”

_ “I’ll be quiet,” _ he didn’t say even though it was what he meant.

***

All things were like other things. They weren’t other things. It was easier to understand than all the non-talking people did, saying things they didn’t mean. David always said what he meant. 

***

The man in black clothes smelled odd, like old paper, but he called David special. David liked that. The man, The Darkling, his parents whispered, and the other Grisha watched David coax copper and tin from a bronze wire until there is no bronze left. David doesn’t know how he does it and how he knows which small pieces are which. He tried to explain it.

“They’re not alike,” said David. “They’re not different, but they’re not alike.”

His parents and the other Grisha frowned, but The Darkling held up a hand. David knew a lot of words. He knew more words than his parents thought he did, but he didn’t know which order they came in or how to make his mouth into the right shapes to make the right sounds. It all came out wrong. David was wrong.

There was an  _ otherness  _ in him that everyone but him could see, and no matter how hard they or him tried to coax it out, it never worked. He hit his thigh.

His mother jumped. It was so simple in his head. Copper was this, tin was that, and there were a dozen small things in between, but they didn’t matter. Everything was small things.

He hit his thigh again.

Everyone was small things.

And again.

“Stop,” The Darkling said, hands held out to him. “David, it’s all right. I understand.”

David liked that even more.

“I understand what you mean perfectly.”

***

“He’s not like the others,” the old woman who smelled burning books said. “I won’t teach him. He’s too dangerous. He’s empty.”

David hadn’t understood that. The sounds of people chewing made him sick, and not understanding made him sicker. He wasn’t big or strong like his father. He couldn’t stop a heart. David felt no more dangerous than the garden he was hiding in.

The other Fabrikators had stared and talked, and it had all become too much. The noise filled him until David was sure he would burst. He knew he couldn’t, but it felt like that. His mother had always frowned when he said things made him feel something. David peeled an unblossomed rose apart and tossed the stem aside. It landed near someone he didn’t know.

A girl with red hair and gold eyes coaxed a tulip to bloom and leached the purple color into her nails. David darted to her, questions tripping over each other in his mind. What was color? How did she isolate it? Could she do it with other things? What other things? Could she do it with metal? With alloys? Could she pry things apart like him?

“Why aren’t you with the other Fabrikators?” he asked.

The girl spun. “I’m not a Fabrikator.”

“Yes you are,” said David, face smushing together. “You’re like me.”

“Why aren’t you with the other Fabrikators, then?” she asked and lifted her sharp little chin.

“I’m not like the others,” he said, not enjoying the turn of his conversation at all. Metal was far more interesting than this. It was worlds more interesting than Baghra. He didn’t want to think about her at all. She  _ hurt _ . “Baghra said so, and she won’t teach me.”

“Then why would you say I’m like them and like you?” she asked.

David groaned. This was why he didn’t talk. He had said the wrong thing and now he was trapped.

“I’m supposed to be like them,” he said.

She shifted. David swallowed. He liked silence, but he didn’t like this silence.

“You’re not like them at all,” she said. “And I’m definitely not like them. They would hate that.”

“I don’t care what they would hate.” He prodded the tulip. “Can you do it again?”

“Do you want to know how I do it?” she asked, eyes wide.

He nodded.

She showed him how she had done it, this time with a blade of grass, and it took three tries for him to sap the green from the plants in their cupped hands.

“We’re alike,” she said softly, and David didn’t understand why.

“Of course we are,” he said. “I told you so.”

She sighed. “No wonder Baghra doesn’t want to teach you.”

But she showed him how to get the color from his hands and smiled when he pulled the impurities from a small silver chain around her neck.

“It’s just like he says,” said Genya with the arrogance only a seven-year-old had, and David didn’t have to ask who. The only person who hadn’t left them both behind. “Like calls to like.”

***

David’s classes at the Little Palace made sense of the world. He didn’t understand so many things, jokes or plays, but he understood logic. He understood that all that was in the world was all that would ever be in the world, and he understood what he was. Give or take a few small things, David was the same as anyone else. 

People, David learned, were nothing but small things, and he knew all those small things now.

Thisness. Thatness. 

The texts were vague, but David didn’t mind. Words could be defined. Books could be rewritten.

He peeled back the skin, fat, and muscle of his left arm to make sure the small things that made him  _ him  _ were the same things that made others them. They were.

So what was this otherness in him?

“You smell clean,” said Genya, crawling onto a stool across from him. “Why?”

The blood was gone. His arm was repaired. He was ten and a Fabrikator, but he learned quickly. Bone and blood were like metal the same way he was like Genya. She wasn’t a Fabrikator or Alkemi. She wasn’t a heartrender or healer. She wasn’t Grisha like he wasn’t like the other children back home.

_ Odd _ .

“I cut myself,” he said, and he didn’t think of it as a lie. “But it’s fine now.”

It didn’t pass for Grisha here. It passed for something else, and they were both odd in their own ways. But that was only the word the world placed on them.

Like thisness. Like thatness.

Words meant anything, and he hated them. He thought Genya hated them, too, even though she talked all the time. Sometimes she didn’t talk at all, only watched him work.

_ “It’s fine now,” _ she never said on those days.

It was easier to sit in silence, to exist, with Genya and to know they understood each other even if the rest of the Little Palace and Ravka insisted they were beyond reason.

“I don’t understand her,” said the other Grisha on bad, bad days. “Acting like she’s one of us.”

“It’s like he’s not even a person,” said the other Fabrikators. “I don’t get it.”

And David never said,  _ “You are because I am, and you’re like me. I am because you are, and I’m like you.” _

It was obvious.

Why bother speaking to anyone else? Why speak at all when they understood each other in the silence taught to them?

“Oh,” said Genya, and in the silence after he knew she understood that he had cut himself, not that he had accidentally cut himself. “It doesn’t help, you know.”

David glanced up, gaze full of her, and never said, “ _ I won’t if you won’t. _ ”

But Genya nodded and said “deal” anyway.

***

“I dream about leaving,” Genya whispered, the dim light of the lanterns barely enough to see by. It was late. The others had left, but David hadn’t noticed. Genya was there. Their comings and goings didn’t make a difference. Only her and the way she scribbled in a journal and replaced his solvents with better ones.

He didn’t bother asking what the new solvents were. Genya was the smartest person he knew save for The Darkling, and he could ask her later. Now, he just needed to get this work done.

“Where would you go?” he asked after several minutes. Too long, he knew, but she didn’t seem to mind.

She shrugged. “Ketterdam, perhaps? What would I do is the more important question?”

“Is it?” David looked up and picked up the vial she had set before him. “What’s this?”

She would work as a tailor or Grisha, and she would flourish. Everyone in the palace wanted Genya.

“Don’t trust me?” she asked, one brow arched. She wasn’t perfect though everyone said she was. She wasn’t in the sense they meant. They didn’t look at her hard or long enough. Her right brow was slightly higher than the left. He liked that one, the higher one. He liked the way her smile came in halves when she was thinking. 

That was perfect.

Maybe she was perfect, and he had misunderstood. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“What a needless question,” he said. He let no one sit at his bench and interrupt his work except for her.

She smiled, only half of her mouth curling up. “It’s very clever. Look…”

And hours later, as the other Grisha wandered into the laboratory and Genya yawned, asking after the time, David held her back.

She flinched, and he loosened his grip.

_ “I’m sorry,” _ he didn’t say.

Too dangerous, that boy. Too odd.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he said.

She didn’t like tight grips. He knew that. He knew so many things about her, all of them tangled in his brain because none of them seemed important. They were never right. He never said the right thing.

She laughed. “David, I can’t stay. I have to work.”

“No.” He let her go and shook his head, hair slapping each side of his face. “Not now. Just—I—I don’t want you to leave.”

People always left.

She smiled again, asymmetrically. Perfectly. Understandingly.

_ “I won’t,” _ she didn’t say.

***

Sometimes, alone in the bright lights of the laboratory at midnight, David found himself trying to make a kefta for her that could withstand the Cut or a blade that could slice cleaner than Grisha steel. He wasn’t seven anymore, and The Darkling wasn’t a hero. He was still the smartest person David knew, right before Genya, but he didn’t help Genya. He had made her a gift, not a person, and didn’t stop the others from treating her as such.

“They don’t matter,” Genya had once said. “He tells me that all the time, and he’s right. Their opinions don’t matter, but that doesn’t mean the others rumors don’t hurt. I just need to be stronger.”

“What other rumors?” David asked.

“Nothing.” She had laughed, but she hadn’t smiled.

He shook his head. “I haven’t heard any rumors about you.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to hear them,” she had said. “You’ll think less of me.”

“Doubtful.” David had draped a piece of cloth over her shoulder. He liked using her as a model for testing things. It meant he could touch her. It was easier when he was in control of what touched him. “Unless you’ve decided rabbit-skin glue is enough to waterproof cloth before stitching, like Ilya did today.”

“Of course I haven’t.” She had smiled at that. “What would you use?”

“I would oil it after it was made.”

“Because of the needle holes?” she asked.

He nodded. “See. I can’t think less of you.”

The knowledge ate at him though. He tried to keep busy, to not think about how The Darkling had placed Genya’s recovery from a wound solely inflicted by him on her shoulders, and didn’t work. 

“ _ Small things _ ,” David didn’t say in the silence of the laboratory where everyone had left him, “ _ can create great consequences _ .”

The Darkling’s handling of Genya, David thought, was a small thing.

***

Eventually, too late, he realized it wasn’t small at all. It was merzost.

The texts were wrong, sometimes. Words didn’t always mean what they said.

A monstrous Grisha didn’t have to sacrifice something of themself to do terrible things; they rarely did. They sacrificed others.

***

David noticed more small things, things he didn’t have the words to explain.

“Why are they laughing?” he asked as he and Genya worked.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not at you.”

He didn’t bring it up again because she’d told him not to—don’t worry, she had said after all—but her silence that day made him hesitate. His parents had stopped speaking to him after he turned four, back before he could figure out how to free the words from his head, and their silence had felt like this. Usually, Genya’s silence was a comfort. They understood each other’s need to exist near someone who wouldn’t question them. David didn’t understand this.

***

“I made you a knife,” he said and handed her a blade.

She took it and turned the steel over and over in her hands. “This isn’t Grisha steel?”

“No,” he said and smiled, happy that she had noticed.

He wasn’t like the other Grisha, and neither was she. 

“I’m a servant, David,” she said and set it down. “I’m not allowed to have this.”

***

He was oblivious. He knew what they said, but it wasn’t like that. 

He forgot, sometimes, that not everyone knew what he knew—the melting point of iron, the odd way bone cells arranged themselves, the incalculable comforts Genya's understanding of his silence brought, the average force of bullets leaving rifles. It was troublesome, and he rarely knew how so before the trouble reared its head.

"Do you like my dress?" Genya asked, and he didn't understand why at all.

Of course he did, but he was working on a new form of Grisha steel, something more supple, and she was usually interested in that. She was always pretty; steel wasn't always new. There was no point in stating the obvious. 

It wasted time. 

“Why was she here?” one of the other Fabrikators asked, and David didn’t bother answering them.

They were a waste of time.

Another Fabrikator laughed. “I won’t complain. She’s pretty as peonies.”

Everyone called her a flower. They had used them all over the years, hair like roses and skin like daisy petals and eyes as bright as mountain arnica. She was made of flowers, yes—he could sense the pigment of roses in her pale cheeks, sometimes, but her work was seamless and endlessly intriguing even though he was never quite sure how to ask about the blush that seeped across her face when they spoke. He had brought it up once, and she had left. He hadn’t brought it up again.

She wasn’t roses or daisies. They withered. Genya didn’t.

She had already been at the Little Palace when he arrived. It was easy to know something was wrong, but everyone spoke around it. Like Baghra except she never spoke to him. She wouldn’t even look at him.

***

Genya Safin was made of stronger stuff than flowers. Bronze was her hair, fed by the copper in her veins. She was palladium and nickel. Steel. An alloy of small things stronger than what she had originally been.

She wasn’t impervious, but saints, did she stay standing.

***

The last day he saw her, she came to him while he was tempering new blades.

“Ah,” said Genya, breath warm against his neck. “I wish I had my own blade.”

“I made you one,” he said.

“You know what I mean.” She leaned against him, her chin brushing his shoulder and her breath warm against his neck. “Grisha steel.”

_ “I wish I was like them,”  _ she never said.

“I don’t have one,” he said.

_ “I’m glad you’re not like them,”  _ he never said. _ “Like calls to like.” _

The Darkling’s words left a headache behind his eyes.

She didn’t pull away. “I know.”

Her closeness made him uncomfortable. Uncomfortable but not like eating cabbage or wearing clothes he wasn’t familiar with. Her closeness twisted in his stomach and tightened at his spine. He became aware of her, of him, and of the weight of her fingers barely pressing into his shoulder. She never startled him. She never forced touch upon him.

He wanted to say he would make her a better knife. He would make her hundreds of knives if she asked, and he would make her sheathes. He would make her anything she wanted. He wanted to make her as comfortable in the world as he was with her.

But there was so much space in his head, so much silence between his brain and his mouth, so much struggle to make his tongue and teeth and lips form the words correctly, that he said nothing.

“I know,” she said and pulled away, retreating to the stool at the other side of his bench. He left if there for her. Now, everyone knew not to move it. “Grisha steel is only for true Grisha.”

He scrunched up his nose and glanced up, hands still. “You’re a tailor.”

“Like I said, true Grisha.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” David went back to his work, to embarrassed to speak again. He must have missed something important. He always missed important things.

Tailor were Grisha, and Genya was a tailor. He had thought his meaning was clear.

She sighed. There were no roses beneath her skin today, and her nails picked at the tabletop, the soft brush of skin against steel. She never picked.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He winced as she picked again. Something was definitely wrong.

“I’m sorry. I know how you are about sounds.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Are you leaving the laboratory today?”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

He would, though, if she asked him too.

But all she did was stand and mutter, “Good.”

***

He made knives fit for a hand not there to grip them.

***

David wished he had wasted time with Genya, and the loss of her presence, the fear of what The Darkling might do to her, was sharper than any knife he made.

***

The rumors made their way to him, and David stayed at his bench. He stayed on the roof. He stayed as far away from the royal family as he could.

“He’s too dangerous,” Baghra had said, and she stared at him sometimes now. She watched him work and shook her head.

David hadn’t understood Genya’s silence at all, how it was forced upon her by her position, and now he didn’t want to stop knowing. He didn’t want to know. He knew she would hate him knowing.

He hadn’t known. He should’ve known.

***

No one had ever described David as greedy, but he thought of himself as such now. His wants were uglier and less necessary than hunger.

He apologized to Alina, but it wasn’t for her.

A lie.

It was half for her.

No. A lie.

He was greedy, and it was for him.

***

He made a purple kefta with gray stitching. He made a purple kefta with red stitching. He made a red kefta with gray stitching. He made a grey kefta with purple stitching. He made a purple kefta with steel stitching. 

The steel was new. It was experimental. It held none of his attention.

He knew how to make so many things, none of them right. If he knew more—no, if he understood more—maybe it would be right eventually. If he peeled apart the world like skin, then he could put it back together right. But Genya wouldn’t like that. They had a deal.

***

_ “You’re pretty,” _ he had never said. “ _ You’re the smartest person I know. Talking to you is like having a home, and I miss you. You deserve a home. You should be safe. I hope your safe.” _

Maybe she was safer away.

She probably was. He couldn’t be mad about her leaving then.

***

David wished he had wasted time.

***

He made more knives. More guns. 

“I know what you meant now,” he said one day when he felt Baghra’s eyes on him. It was uncomfortable in a way Genya’s gaze never was. “About me being dangerous.”

Baghra shook her head. “Knowing’s the problem. Do you care?”

“I can’t right now,” he said, fingers slick with blood from his endless work on the discs. “I’ve killed people, but if I don’t finish this, he’ll kill more.”

She shook her head again, and David lifted his head to her.

“Small things,” he said and held up his hands, “have great consequences.”

She didn’t talk to him again.

***

Genya flinched away from him.

***

All this knowledge. All of it useless. All of him useless. What was the point of knowing if this was what came from it?

He was a waste.

***

He tried not to force touch upon her. He knew—not exactly, but enough to recognize the way she flinched when her sleeves brushed against her arms or her hair slid across her cheek—it made her uncomfortable, but they had to move. 

_ “Leave me. Leave me. Leave me,”  _ Genya never said.

The others did. They marched ahead and left Genya behind as they always had. They had never been quiet, and they had never learned to listen. Her own doing, David heard them whisper and knew Genya heard them too, but he couldn’t understand any of it. The Darkling had done this to her when she was five. The queen and king had done this to her every day, every time he came calling or she dismissed Genya. The Grisha had done this to her with their talk and closed ranks. All of Ravka had done this to her with its silence and the silence forced upon her.

David had done this to her.

They had all left her to the quiet that was being a servant in the shadow of a king, and David would leave her no more.

He held her clothes, not her. He tugged her hands loosely. He never grasped her wrists, not now that he could see the old blood pooling beneath her skin. He waited, he would wait forever, and urged her on. He talked about the secrets of Grisha steel he wasn’t supposed to share. He begged for answers to his questions about her solvents and tonics he hadn’t been able to ask before.

“My father took me into the woods when I was five,” he whispered in her ear, trying to chase away the words from the group before them and the creak of feet on cold earth that made her wince. “He watched me for a while, and then he left. It was dark, and I got scared, so I hid. Then the sun rose. I went home. My mother looked so relieved, standing in the kitchen and calling me downstairs, when I didn’t come and my brother said he couldn’t find me. I had never seen her so happy. She didn’t look like that again until The Darkling came and told them I was a Fabrikator.”

He told her about his brother and sister. He told her about the way the wind whistled through the woods at the edge of the farm, and he told her how long it took to walk into town. He told her the first words she ever said to him.

And soon enough, they were farther than they had been before.

David never said,  _ “I’m won’t leave you. I won’t. I won’t.” _

David had been quiet for so long, and he could feel her thoughts in the silence between then. The others marched ahead, leaving the pair behind as they always had. They never been quiet like Genya and David had.

But the silence wasn’t the same now.

It was dangerous.

***

“We are all hurt,” Zoya said, and the words stuck in her mouth as if she didn’t even like them. “We all have to keep walking. We can’t wait.”

“That’s not fair.” David frowned them. He wore his heart on his face even if he didn’t carry it in his tone. “She’s been through more than just this. She’s been hurt for years, and you’re only noticing now.”

And he hadn’t seen it.

He hadn’t seen anything.

Zoya flinched, and he liked that.

“He’s too dangerous. He’s empty,” Baghra had said, but David didn’t feel empty. He felt everything.

***

He messed up the words. They were so hard. There were so many he had wanted to say, years’ worth of them trapped in him, and they’d come out all wrong. Then, she had kissed him back, and they were alive. 

They—David hasn’t committed treason, but he liked learning new things. He would. She didn’t even need to ask. She wouldn’t. Maybe he should have told her he would kill someone for her.

He had never understood romance.

“Metals are tricky,” he said, tracing a line from Genya’s palm to her shoulder.

Kissing was better than treason, though. Probably. And sex. That was definitely better. He hadn’t really thought about it before—touching was so hard, so much—but they were silent and slow and smiling, and he knows so much about her. He talked for hours, and she talked far longer. His throat hurt.

He liked it.

“Can I try again?” he asked.

Genya laughed, shivering against him, and pulled the thin blanket up to her chest. “You can try as many times as you like.”

“No, not that.” He paused. “Wait. Do you want—should I? You enjoyed this, right?”

Maybe silence wasn’t good for some things.

“Very much,” she said and kissed his cheek. “I know you don’t mean this. What do you mean?”

He laughed. His other arm tightened around her. 

“You don’t need fixing,” he said. “I got that part right, but you don’t need me telling you that either.”

She hummed. “It’s nice to hear.”

David didn’t want to fix her. He wanted to know her. He hadn’t known anything he thought he did, and he wanted to know everything now. 

He had always wanted to know everything. There had been a hunger in him he could never sate, a hunger so deep he thought his mother was right and he would starve to death, but Genya understood it wasn’t more important than her. He had seen her work. She knew that hunger, too.

David didn’t hunger for knowledge; he wanted understanding. To understand and be understood.

“You shouldn’t have to be strong. They’re wrong about that. They’re wrong about you,” he said, picking his words slower and more carefully than he had in the hall.

His lips still tasted like her tears, like salt, even though the crying was days away. He’d read a poem once about salt that rained and rained until the poet drowned in it, and he hadn’t understood it at all because salt didn’t rain. That wasn’t how rain worked. He understood it now. Grief was like salt. They weren’t the same, but they were alike. Like called to like.

“You shouldn’t have to be strong,” he said. “You should haven’t to come out stronger from something terrible to be respected, and they should have respected you before. They were wrong then. They are wrong now, but so are you. You’re not broken. You are tempered, and you are your own blade.”

Genya shifted. He took her hand in his.

“But you shouldn’t have to be strong on your own. I want to be with you. Always.”


End file.
